O Magazine’s First-Ever Poetry Issue

When I heard that Oprah had selected Maria Shriver to guest edit O magazine’s April poetry issue, and that the issue would feature Mike Tyson and Ashton Kutcher talking about poetry, eight rising poets modelling spring fashions, such as a $2,757 sequined cardigan and a $1,296 pencil skirt, and an “intimate and revealing interview with the famously private Mary Oliver,” of course I had to investigate. Here are my findings: According to Lisa Israel, an O publicist, “Oprah and Maria Shriver had a sleepover, and talked about random things, as girls do” and the conversation turned to poetry and the influence it’s had on their lives. Shriver asked her friends Kate Capshaw and Bono to quote their favorite poems for a feature called “ Poetic Souls.” Other celebrity contributions include: Matt Dillon on W. B. Yeats, Sting on Ted Hughes, James Franco on Louise Glück, and Demi Moore on Tennyson. The O poetry issue is not, I repeat, not the place to go looking for new, original work (except one reader-submitted poem in the letter-from-the-editor section), but it does feature eight “rising poets” in fashion shoots. One of them, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, a Cave Canem Fellow whose second full-length collection of poetry “Mule & Pear” comes out this fall, told me that someone contacted her in December about modelling. The day of the shoot she was informed she’d be photographed as “the Romantic poet.” Her photograph shows her on a bed of sand with a large paint brush, pretending to paint the letters of her poem on an enormous wall. “I kept sliding around on sand,” she told me. “In fact there was a man nearby who did nothing but keep the sand looking good with a rake. In another corner a fan was blowing. A blowing fan with sand on the ground while you are encouraged to smile is interesting.” Then there’s Maria Shriver’s great interview with Mary Oliver, her favorite poet (here’s Shriver reading one of Oliver’s poems aloud). In the interview, Oliver says that when she was very young and had decided to become a poet, she made a list of items she would never have: a house, a good car, fancy clothes. Unfortunately, Oliver was not featured in a fancy photo shoot and did not have the opportunity to wear fancy clothes; but Griffiths said that she did not get to keep the clothes, so Oliver should not be too upset.